Nothing Changes

It’s been over a year since I started writing here. It’s been almost two years since I’ve been having a psychoanalysis. I understand a lot more now. I understand how my brain works in intimate detail. I can recognise the voices now, and understand their agendas. I can physically sense my anxiety creeping up, like a burning sensation in my forehead, just like Harry Potter when he senses Voldemort coming. I see it like a cloud coming over my eyes when the anger starts to boil up, and I’ve learnt when to turn away. Some days I truly believe I’m healing.

Yet nothing really changes. I still feel the same as I always have. A feeling of hopelessness. A feeling of isolation. Like I will never truly know what it is to connect with another person. It keeps me awake at night. Itching, like a dog scratching at the inside of my mind.

I’m starting to see that some things can’t be healed. The anger, for instance, will always be there. It’s like a load bearing post for my personality, and I must either retain it or discard everything that I am. The only hope for not feeling what I feel is death. This makes me sad, deeply so, because I don’t know if anyone can truly love so much anger. I’ve learnt to redirect it somewhat, and turn it in circles. Yet, it still remains.

I have many reasons to be angry. This isn’t simply selfishness. If you had the memories I have floating around your brain you would be angry too. So many memories. When they all start to flow out there are so many thoughts I can barely focus on any single one. This makes it hard to know what is even real, when your thoughts aren’t even opaquely conscious, more of a miasma of anger and half remembered things. They keep me awake at night, like I am now. They taunt me.

People often make romantic notions, such as “you chose to continue being the victim”, but this is simply not true. If you believe this then you probably were either never really a victim in the first place, or you have deluded yourself that you’re not now. For instance, when I was young my family was poor, something you can’t really understand unless you’ve truly known what that is. Even though, in some measures at least, I am quite wealthy now, I will ALWAYS suffer from poverty. There are just some scars that can’t be healed. No, it’s not even that exactly. It’s that you can’t kick the monkey off your back if the monkey is you.

I don’t even know who I am any more.

It’s still just as painful to write. I still hear the voices judging every word I put down. My overwhelming desire is to delete everything and run away so that I don’t face the risk of discovering that everything I think and say is self indulgent nonsense. I just don’t know what else there is I can do. One thing I’ve come to realise is that the moment you think you’re somewhere is the moment you suddenly realise it all runs much deeper than you ever imagined.

“Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye and it turned out to be a scab
And I had this funny feeling like I just knew it’s something bad
I just couldn’t leave it alone, I kept picking at the scab” Only, Nine Inch Nails

I have learnt one thing about myself. Well, not learnt exactly, more came to recognise the obvious truth. There is one overwhelmingly defining trait that has allowed me to make it as far as I have. I will never quit. I refuse to lay down and die. I will find a way to beat this or I will die trying. Sometimes, though, the road seems so long. I spend a lot of time wondering if I’ll make it to the end before I die, and if I don’t is there really any point?